$2 million to $15 million | 2025 Revenue: $2,400,000
After switching her academic focus in college from journalism to public relations, Michelle Calcote King has since created a role for herself that combines the two.
King is the founder and owner of Reputation Ink, a full-service public relations firm that specializes in the legal field and in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
King said the attributes that set apart her company include a focus on telling compelling stories, connecting working journalists with subject-matter experts and providing accurate, well-researched information about clients to media outlets, trade publications and more.
With a staff that includes several former reporters and editors, Reputation Ink has grown from a bootstrapped operation comprising King and a freelancer to a company with 17 employees and clients in several states.
“We interview lawyers, we interview architects, we find out what’s interesting on a regular basis with them and we turn that into stories,” she said. “We do a lot of contributed content, like with trade publications. We do a lot of white papers, just a lot of different kinds of content.
“So it gives us, I think a lot of my team, a chance to still be journalists, but more brand journalists for our clients.”
King grew up in Keystone Heights, which she calls a “one-stoplight town” southwest of Jacksonville, and attended the University of Florida, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations and a master’s degree in internal communications.
After interning in Florida, she spent three years working in public relations in London and two years as a marketing communications manager in Melbourne, Australia.
Returning to the United States, King worked at firms in Jacksonville, North Carolina and Alabama before launching Reputation Ink in 2011. She said started her own company because “I love having control over my life.”
“I find that most people who start their companies enjoy being self-directed,” she said. “So that was a big thing for me. I also was just ambitious. The last agency I was at before I started my agency specialized in law firms, and I saw how powerful it was to have that niche focus, and I just kind of thought, ‘I could do this.’”
Starting in an office in the Five Points Theatre building in Riverside, King said she initially took whatever work the firm could find. She said her strategy to specialize in law and AEC evolved as she watched the local effects of financial disruption of traditional media and realized that gaining coverage for clients in metro Jacksonville would grow increasingly difficult.
“There just wasn’t, on the local level, the kind of work that could be sustained, whereas if you’re doing national PR for a firm that wants sustained national coverage, there are tons of trade magazines and trade organizations at the national level that are seeking content.”
King said she switched Reputation Ink’s focus in 2018-19 and has seen growth since. Last year, she added six staff members to handle rising demand for the firm’s services.
She said the company sets itself apart through its journalistic approach and by having experience and expertise in its clients’ opportunities for increasing awareness of brands and stories. For instance, Reputation Ink recognizes trade organizations that produce influential rankings of firms and companies, and knows what information those organizations need for their assessments.
The company also keeps clients up to date on upcoming awards and regularly recommends them to journalists who come to Reputation Ink seeking sources for stories about legal cases and issues, trends in AEC and other matters.
“We get journalists who regularly approach us from (publications) like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and say, ‘Do you have a lawyer who could comment on this?” King said. “We kind of have what I call ‘inbox reputation,’ with those kind of reporters and journalists who know that we’re going to give them somebody who can speak to the issues.”
King, whose employees work remotely, credits her staff with the company’s success. They include two senior employees who have been with the firm for more than 10 years.
During an interview from her home in Springfield, where she offices, King said she sees growth in Reputation Ink’s future.
Artificial intelligence has introduced uncertainty into media, public relations and numerous other fields, but King said she believes it is helping her business. As AI systems are trained, she said, they rely on information from sources that are widely recognized as being factual, well-edited and reliable.
“AI will find information, but then it’s checking and saying, ‘Is that credible?’ And it’s the earned media outlets with high authority that they’re relying on,” she said. “Muck Rack (a PR and media management platform) put out a report that really got a lot of attention, saying that earned media is moving back into the forefront of importance. It’s good for us, and I hope it’s good for journalists, too.”